I had to share this personal proof-of-concept project I just finished. The map is based a location in one of Paizo's Pathfinder adventure paths (The Skinsaw Murders). The building is a run-down mansion overhanging a sea cliff.

To get these images, I first fleshed out the maps in Google Sketchup, stripped the Collada files out of Sketchup's KMZ exports, pulled them into Daz Studio, made some render images and then finally put them all together in Photoshop. Lots of experimenting and tweaking along the way. Once I figured out a good workflow, the process was pretty simple and the bulk of my time was spent in Sketchup. Now if I can just tackle the texturing...

-RLucci

mearrin69

10-01-2009, 03:56 AM

Wow. That's awesome. My players will be visiting Vorel and company very soon so I'm looking forward to your progress on this. Do you plan on destroying it a bit or are you planning to make it look as it did when built?
M

Steel General

10-01-2009, 08:34 AM

Very cool!

Ascension

10-01-2009, 09:08 AM

Cool stuff, man. I had no idea you could jerry rig kmz over to daz. I wanna see those textures :)

ravells

10-01-2009, 12:15 PM

Me neither - how did you get such a beautiful ambient occlusion render in Daz (presumably Bryce rather than Studio)? I'd love to know the render settings that you used.

torstan

10-01-2009, 12:51 PM

Wow, that looks very cool. How long does it take you to put together a model with that level of detail?

rlucci

10-01-2009, 06:57 PM

Thanks for the ego-boosters guys!

Do you plan on destroying it a bit or are you planning to make it look as it did when built?
Sketchup doesn't do broken/destroyed very well. I tried with a previous project, but wasn't happy with the results. Besides this was more a test to see if I could get Sketchup and Daz Studio to place nice together.

I had no idea you could jerry rig kmz over to daz.
The KMZ file is really just a ZIP file with the extension changed (security through obscurity, I guess). Just rename the .KMZ to .ZIP and, boom, there's your .DAE collada file inside the zip file. Some tweaking is needed once you import the Collada file, but it works.

...how did you get such a beautiful ambient occlusion render in Daz (presumably Bryce rather than Studio)? I'd love to know the render settings that you used.
That was DAZ Studio (the free version, not Pro). The current version (v.3) includes a plug-in for ambient occlusion. It's buried, and not very intuitive when you do find it, but it's there (it's called "!UberEnvironment2 Base" in the "Lights" section of their "Built-in Content"). There's also a normal single distant light with a soft shadow that makes it look better.

How long does it take you to put together a model with that level of detail?
Umm... Let's see... 6-8 hours? I had made the fireplaces and doors in a previous project, so those were just dropped in (some squished a bit). The layout was easy - just copied from the adventure path. The real time consuming parts were the roofs, stairs, and those trusses (which I might have gooten carried away with a bit).

nolgroth

10-01-2009, 07:53 PM

That's cool. I think the stairs are extremely well done, so if you went overboard with them, it was to the greater effect.

Gandwarf

10-02-2009, 07:34 AM

Very nice, have some rep.

dragonwolf

10-03-2009, 08:24 PM

Excellent job. I just got a notice for a Sketchup update and it looks like Collada import./export is now supported. http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=115424